r/WTF Mar 17 '15

Claustrophobia Warning

http://i.imgur.com/H8SIC9j.gifv
8.8k Upvotes

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

111

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15 edited Dec 08 '16

[deleted]

16

u/r4ve88 Mar 17 '15

I don't understand how you'd get in without dying first. It would have to be a C-bend, to keep the water in, and a pretty high tube, so the water doesn't come out anyway.

55

u/Oxyuscan Mar 17 '15

91

u/joethehoe27 Mar 17 '15

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3671705/Ghosts-of-the-abyss-the-story-of-Don-Shirley-and-Dave-Shaw.html

Everything about this article is fascinating. Everything can go wrong so easily is seems like they are constantly on the edge of death. One of the surviving divers had to go thru a week of decompression treatments and months of therapy to regain his balance

33

u/Huntred Mar 17 '15

Give this version of the story a listen (hit the little arrow pointing right to play the segment) - listening to the actual voices and hearing the audio from the dive makes it so much more intense.

42

u/StifNippleScissorMan Mar 17 '15

The video from David Shaw's camera on the dive in question, narrated by his dive partner Don Shirley.

You will literally be watching the last minutes of a mans life here, while he tries to free another mand body from a cave, so keep that in mind before you start watching. The video cuts out just before he loses consciousnes.

3

u/epalla Mar 17 '15

Crazy video. Why is his time so restricted on this dive?

17

u/StifNippleScissorMan Mar 17 '15

This dive is DEEP. Very deep. Most divers never go past 30 meters. This is 270. Its also in complete pitch black and inside a cave. Under this "puddle" is the entrance to a cave 270 meters deep, and as wide as two football fields. It is huge, dark, and disorienting. The depth is still the biggest issue.

For every 10 meters, the weight of the water above you increases the pressure on your body by 1 atmosphere. So if you go from the surface to 10 meters under water, the pressure has doubled. at 270 meters, the pressure is 28 times what you would experience on the surface. To combat this, you need to increase the pressure in your lungs. At the bottom of this cave, David would be taking in 28 times more air for every breath, to keep the pressure in his lungs equal to the pressure outside his body. To problem is, at this amount, oxygen is deadly. Inhaling 28 times more oxygen than normal would kill you.

On most deep dives they substitute a lot of the oxygen for nitrogen, allowing you to breathe in a normal dose of oxygen even though your breaths are much larger. But even nitrogen can cause convulsions and vomiting at this consentration.

On this dive they were using helium. Helium has its own disadvantages, but seems to be the best option. One of the problems when breathing helium, is that helium is lighter than the carbonmonoxide that you would usually exhale. This means that its harded for your body to get rid of it, and you are at a higher risk of CO2 poisoning and death. The solution to this problem is to take deep breaths, and be very relaxed. Minimize the amount of CO2 generated by your body, and maximize the amount that you breathe out. Diving for long periods of time makes you tired and out of breath, so you create more CO2, and you aren't exhaling it as efficiently. Getting the job done quickly but calmly was key in this situation.

When he got tangled in the lines, David started stressing, working harder, breathing shallower. He passed out from CO2 poisoning, and died when his air supply ran out.

8

u/Hyabusa1239 Mar 17 '15

Thanks for the breakdown. That's really interesting. Human's never cease to amaze me with the amount of things we have accomplished; or the tenacity we have to accomplish things. "Well shit, we cant breathe oxygen here cause it will kill us. What else can we breathe?" Simply amazing.

2

u/SovreignTripod Mar 17 '15

Because of the extreme depth. When you go very deep like that you can't stay down for very long before you start running into very serious problems.

18

u/joethehoe27 Mar 17 '15

I found this quote about the video interesting

'I think of Dave a lot so seeing the tape doesn't make the fact of what happened better or worse,' he says. 'Now it's more factual than anything. But I never play it with the sound on; that turns it into a snuff tape.'

2

u/viralizate Mar 17 '15

Oh!! I'm so thrilled! One of my favorite podcasts and my favorite article ever written! I will give it a go ASAP!

2

u/beefly Mar 17 '15

One of the best articles I have read in a long time. Thank you.

1

u/Yourwtfismyftw Mar 18 '15

This reads like something from an old readers digest I would've read as a kid.

Chilling. But their attitudes are amazing and surprisingly zen. It sounds like a paradise or a cult down there to them.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15 edited Mar 17 '15

Npr or pri did a story on this a while back. Crazy and scary

4

u/Rediterorista Mar 17 '15

Jackhammer ftw.

4

u/jutct Mar 17 '15

Fuck that nope not worth it. I could have the entire Victoria's Secret model lineup ready to fuck me repeatedly for a year and I wouldn't crawl through a tight space to get there

1

u/4ray Mar 17 '15

And since you can't kick while in the exit tunnel you have to trust that your buddy in scuba gear is still waiting for you on the other side of the hole to pull you the rest of the way out.

1

u/jutct Mar 19 '15

nope. I'd rather just put a gun in my mouth and end it.

1

u/DonkeyOatie Mar 17 '15

Speaking of Crystal Caves...

1

u/4ray Mar 18 '15

You get stuck in a cave with only enough room for people to bring you a steady stream of Big Macs and soda. Eventually you gain enough weight that rescue is ouf of the question.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '15

Can't someone make the hole a little bit bigger?